“And she likes flowers?”
“Yes, ma’am; me an’ Biddy picked a bowkay outen a ashba’l oncet, an’ me mudder sticked it in a tumbler an’ loved it. Come, Biddy, make de lady a bow!” Upon which the small Chesterfield stood off a few steps and gave an absurd little bob of a bow which Biddy gravely endeavoured to imitate.
“I think I’ll go with you,” said Olivia, open-minded as ever to a new interest; and hand in hand and chattering amicably, the three moved across the turf and down the long gravel walk to the dusty street. Surprising how short the distance was between 230 the sweet seclusion of the old tennis-court and the squalid quarter where these little human blossoms grew!
Olivia was thinking of that as she stood on the veranda an hour later, looking down upon the flowery kingdom to which all her interest and ambition had been pledged. Yes, it was lovely, lovely in the long afternoon light, and it would have been lovelier still with the gleaming marble she had dreamed of. She really tried to keep her mind upon it, to forget the little drama over there in the stuffy tenement. But no; she was too good a gardener for that. Was not a whole family broken and wilting for lack of means to transplant it?
The doctor had ordered Mrs. O’Trannon to Colorado, and Mike had dropped his work as “finisher”—whatever that might be—and had gone out to prepare the way for the others to follow. He had found no chance to work at his trade, but he had got a job on a ranch, where the pay was small, but the living good. A fine place it would be for the invalid and the children, when once he could get together 231 the money to send for them. But meanwhile here they were, and the winter coming on.
As Olivia stood looking down upon her beloved garden, she could not seem to see anything but brown stalks and dead blossoms. All that lavish colour looked fictitious and transitory; she had somehow lost faith in it.
Mrs. O’Trannon had been pleased with the flowers; she had grown up on a farm, she said. Sure she never’d ha’ got sick at all if she’d ha’ stayed where she belonged. But then, where would Mike have been, and the babies? And where would Mike be, and the babies, Olivia thought with a pang,—where would they be if the mother wilted and died? She turned, suddenly, and passed in at the glass doors and on to her father’s study.
At sight of the kind, quizzical face lifted at her entrance, Olivia winced a bit. About an hour and a half it must be, since he said it, and he had given her a year! As if that made any difference! she told herself, with a little defiant movement of 232 the chin, as she crossed the room and seated herself at the opposite side of the big writing-table where she could face the music handsomely.
“Well, Olivia; changed your mind yet?” the professor inquired, struck, perhaps, by the resolution of her aspect.
“Yes,” she answered, in an impressive tone, “I’ve thought of something I should prefer to a sun-dial.”